Land Use Change
in Bangalore, India

Investigator:

Description:

The city of Bangalore has been expanding at a rapid rate over the last several decades, both demographically and spatially. While this growth has helped Bangalore to establish itself as the “Silicon Valley” of India, it has also come at the expense of agricultural land, natural habitat, and other open space in an around the city. This loss of open space has significant negative implications both for natural communities and the quality of life of the residents of Bangalore.

In the CEO Lab, I am looking at Landsat images from the last 35 years and comparing them to recent images of Bangalore to see how the city has expanded. In performing this analysis, I am utilizing the classification skills I developed in the Observing the Earth From Space remote sensing class to study the rapid urbanization and land use change of Bangalore, India. I will then do some initial “ground-truthing” by linking the classified image to GoogleEarth, which will provide me with high-resolution imagery of Bangalore.

I will also be traveling to Bangalore this summer to conduct ground-truthing around the city. In addition to ground-truthing, I will also be taking photographs of different urban structures throughout the city using a camera with a built-in GPS. Once I return to the CEO Lab after my trip, I will perform an accuracy assessment of the classification based upon my ground-truthing data. I will also georeference my photographs with my map of Bangalore in order to analyze how urban structures vary in different parts of the city, and how structures have changed as the city has expanded outwards. This photographic data may also be helpful in identifying more subtle spectral variations within the urban area that correspond with different building types.